Sunday, May 17, 2009

Save the Gookie!

(Thanks to Anthony Blampied for the tip-off.).Strange things are afoot at the Internet Movie Database. .Under the postings for Harpo, all references to his "gookie" face have become "*bleep*ie", thanks to the board's automatic censorship device.'Gook', it would appear, is a well-known racial slur. I dare say it is. Just as 'Gookie' is a facial expression named after a New York cigar roller..Okay, the censorship is automatic - but the user comments are not.One says: "I guess some would call this excessive Political Correctness, but I wouldn't trade it for what people had to put up with in the Good Old Days."The woman whose original post was censored has obligingly changed it from 'the infamous Gookie face' to 'the infamous Harpo face' - and apologised for offending anyone.Odd, then, that the IMDB's own description of Harpo as possessed of "big, poofy, curly red hair" has managed to escape from the offenceometer unscathed.I would have liked to have heard Groucho's views on this.

5 comments:

Absolutely. There are some major idiots in the world... And why are they taken seriously? They are taken seriously because the Marx Brothers are no longer here to take the piss out of them. That's why.

It is very silly as Harpo himself was completely void of any racial tendencies himself, I need to ask his son, Bill, again for the specific hospital, but Harpo was the only Caucasian member on a board of African-American doctors who created a hospital, which would cater to needy colored persons. Incredulous as it sounds now, white people then were afraid to be operated on by black surgeons--Dr. Hackenbush not-withstanding. Also, there are letters written to Harpo regarding where the proceeds of sales from his paintings should go and he wrote all should go to the NAACP. Would have loved to have met that chipper chap, or your Chaplin too ;)

Swordfish

I got a Super-8 projector when I was eight and a Betamax video recorder when I was eleven. I fell in love with Universal horror films in the summer of 1983 and the Marx Brothers the following Christmas. In 1984 I bought my first Halliwell's Film Guide and met the man himself.
That brings us more or less up to date.